MIAMI, Florida — Several dozen supporters of some of the lesser-known candidates in the Democratic presidential primary gathered outside the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts to boost their choices — and air their grievances.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) had the strongest contingent among participants in the first debate Wednesday night. “She finally has a chance, if the DNC has not fixed the game too much,” said Alan Kobrin.

Kobrin, who was the Florida coordinator for Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign in 2000 on the Green Party ticket, said that he supported Gabbard because she was the only candidate to commit to opposing “regime change” in foreign policy.

But the Democratic National Committee “played games in 2016,” he said, and this year he believed it was doing the same. He cited the party’s failure to eliminate “superdelegates” — that is, office-holders and insiders who have independent votes at the party’s convention, and whose role is partly to prevent insurgent campaigns from upsetting the party establishment.

The superdelegates will no longer be able to cast votes on the first ballot — but will still be able to cast second-round votes. With two dozen candidates in the race, Kobrin said, they had nearly as much power as before.

“That, to me, is a setup,” he told Breitbart News.

Kobrin’s concerns echo those of other Democrats who point out that while NBC — the host network — and the DNC assured the public that the allocation of candidates to each of the two debate nights was random and fair, most of the major frontrunners will appear on Thursday.

Another Gabbard supporter, Wamilton, from Palm Beach, said there ought to be agreement between Breitbart readers and Gabbard supporters.

“We sort of agree with what Trump did, canceling [strikes against] Iran at the last minute,” he said, commenting on Trump’s surprise decision last week.

Other candidates with small groups of supporters outside the venue included Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ); Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and former Rep. John Delaney (D-TX).

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.